


Don't Panic

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Two Blades Series [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A twisted kind of love story, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gallows Humor, Knight of Hell Dean Winchester, M/M, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Violence, canon up to season 9 (roughly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25656499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: “Don’t panic,” says the guy who just kidnapped Dean Winchester, knight of hell.This is not going to end in an optimal fashion for anyone within a ten mile radius.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Two Blades Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1008702
Comments: 15
Kudos: 118
Collections: FicFacer$ 2020





	Don't Panic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stennihag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stennihag/gifts).



> Timestamp for the Two Blades series, a follow up of the 'A Chain, Two Blades and an Army of You and Me' fic. I might be rearranging the order of the fics in the series, since this is Destiel to the hilt and more in line with the initial fic than the followup Sam/Mick Davies fics. 
> 
> A big thanks for Stennihag for the timestamp prompt, I had a ton of fun writing this :) I do love me some bad-ass demon!Dean and Castiel...

“Don't panic,” said one of Dean’s abductors, “everything’s fine.”

That sure scored high on the bullshit meter. The world had just flipped like a pancake, dropping Dean out of a strip joint in Albuquerque and into a circle of candles and sigils chalked onto the concrete floor of a dusty disused warehouse. Dean had been in the act of slipping a dollar bill to a girl wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, sequined chaps and a tong. The bill was still in his fingers, but the sexy cowgirl had been replaced by a couple of dirty guys. Nothing ‘fine’ with this picture.

The suggestion that there was no need to panic was also way off the mark. A couple of mangy dudes who’d pulled a knight of hell away from his entertainment had every reason to panic indeed.

“Dean, that is you, right? Dean Winchester?”

“Yep,” Dean replied without hesitation. In Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, whatever the color of his eyes or the consistency of what passed for his soul, Dean was Dean, the one thing he was always and ever sure of.

“Good. I’m so sorry about this, Mr Winchester.”

“Yep,” Dean repeated, since that was certainly going to be the case. His hand slipped to the back of his jeans and fastened on the hilt of the First Blade. 

Where was Cas? He’d been sitting next to Dean in the private lap dance lounge, an undrunk appletini in front of him, contemplating sexy cowgirl gyrating her ass for them and occasionally pointing out how acrobatic she and the other acts were. The angel had been holding out a ten dollar bill to add to the stash in the tong, with a phone number written on it - not his own, of course, the number of the dancer’s grandma along with a curt suggestion that the girl (stage name, Lula, real name, Marjorie Ann McDermot) call the lovely elderly lady who missed her grandkid and prayed for her every night, and maybe gran-gran would enjoy it if Marjorie invited her to her next performance instead of leaving her at home. This kind of thing happened a lot with Cas; the demon and the angel had gotten kicked out of a total of eight of Albuquerque's strip bars, gentlemen’s clubs, titty joints and exotic dance venues so far this week, as well as one karaoke, and Dean was having a ball. He’d gotten to fight a bunch of beefy bouncers as a bonus. But back to the present where two guys had removed Cas and a dancer with glitter all over her nipples and replaced them with their unshaven waxen-faced selves. Dressed in the latest line of Hobo Chic, they looked like they hadn’t slept in a week and not washed in considerably longer. They might have glitter on their nipples, but Dean was in no hurry to check the pungent bastards to find out. 

“Are we sure it’s him?” Standing next to mister Soon-To-Panic, the second abductor was shaking like a leaf, which, granted, was a bit more in line with what Dean was used to than guys trying to reassure him. “Are- are you really sure, man? He looks just like _him!_ ” Beneath a t-shirt full of stains and holes advertising an LA gym, this big dude must have been considerably jacked at some point in his life, but he had lost weight and tone recently and was now some remaining muscles squishing around a shivering bag of nervous jello. He was holding an AR-15 in a way that he must think was intimidating and was not. Dean mentally dubbed him Pudding. 

“Of course I’m sure, we did the spell right, and look, the grace in the pot is burnt out.” The first of the kidnappers, Panic, was average size, a twiggy guy with a long twitchy nose, red-rimmed eyes swimming around like goldfish in a bowl and a bandana knotted over thick greasy hair a hippy would disown. He was holding out a charred ceramic bowl like an offering to a god. A dirty Sioux City Bandits duffel bag sagging open at his feet contained more candles as well as bottles, bones and the entire spice aisle of a wholefood market by the smell of it. Witchcraft kit. “Plus, this place is warded. This is Dean Winchester, not an angel. Uh, right?” the guy asked Dean in a frazzled way, lowering the bowl a bit. 

“Very right,” Dean had to agree once again. “Not an angel. Just who are you two whack jobs? Are you human?”

Panic’s face broke into a wobbly grin. “Of course, don’t worry, Dean, we’re one hundred percent human.”

“Well damn.”

“Sorry?”

“I was afraid you were gonna say that, but I had some hopes.” The seal of Ephesian, the magical leash Cas had put on him awhile back, twinged a warning, a shivering cramp running through his muscles and forcing his hand off the hilt of the Blade. Even miserable demon-napping assholes telling him not to panic were de facto covered by the Do Not Kill Humans clause Cas had imposed on him. It was only if-

“We need to hurry,” Pudding blurted out. “C’mon, get his blood!”

“And now we’re back in my wheelhouse,” Dean announced contentedly, drawing the First Blade from his belt. Cas had put in a footnote, something along the lines of ‘but you are allowed to defend yourself if a human attacks you.’ Non-lethally, the feathery party pooper had added, but there was still loads of fun to be had within that stipulation. 

Both dudes looked blankly at the First Blade. 

Pudding asked, “What’s that? A back scratcher?” at the same time Panic said, almost sadly, “Oh, no, that won’t work.”

“Pretty sure it will.”

“No, you need one of these.” Panic fastidiously put down the ceramic bowl and fished something out from the side pocket of the Bandits duffel. 

An angel blade of all things, gleaming fitfully under the light struggling through the grimy warehouse windows, as out of place in Panic’s hands as the keys to a Mercedes Benz.

Dean looked fixedly at the silver weapon. “I need it for...what?”

“To kill angels.”

...Dean had questions now. This was the point where one pumped the brakes and asked for explanations.

Panic yelped like a chihuahua as Dean picked him up by the front of his dirty camo jacket and bore him through the dusty warehouse to slam him against the nearest wall, First Blade pressed up against the stinky sweatpants below the beltline. Explanations were boring. Dean was going to maim his would-be purloiners now, explanations would crop up in due course.

“Wait, wait, we won’t hurt you! Don’t be scared! We only need a few drops!”

“Again, there’s that notion that I should be the one gettin’ worried here. You really don’t know who you’re dealing with.” 

“We do, we do! You’re Dean Winchester, you used to be - I mean, you probably still are a hunter, this version of you. A hunter of monsters and stuff, and you met the angels during the apocalypse. I mean, not you, you, but the other you, our version of you.” 

...Explanations were going to be skull-fuckingly complicated as well as boring, Dean was sure of it. Good thing he’d decided to bypass them in favor of torture time.

“We’re not going to hurt you, honest, don’t worry,” Panic said earnestly, two seconds away from getting a vasectomy courtesy of the world’s oldest, most lethal murder weapon, “and I’m sorry, this is probably real confusing to you, please, please believe me, we won’t hurt you, we just need a few drops of blood for a spell - but we have to get moving now! Castiel could be here any minute!”

“You’re right again. I’m sure Cas will be here soon and he’s gonna be pissed.” 

“I know! He’ll kill us if he finds us!” said Panic with the naked terror Dean had expected ages ago finally flashing a fin. 

Dean hesitated, the blade pressed against the dude’s belly button. This… was getting really weird. 

“Cas has no reason to kill me. He probably won’t kill you either, just give you a stern lecture.”

“Lecture? What?”

Cue mutual stares of confusion. Then Panic licked his lips. “Look, we had to- this lady we know - professional conman - conwoman? - she pretended to be a collaborator, leaked to Castiel some watered down version of our plan in order to trick him out of some grace for this spell, it had to be his grace, you see, he was the one who got you out of hell and the two of you have a bond, not you you, our you.”

“Huh?”

“Or maybe you too since you seem to know who I’m talking about. We warded the warehouse, but the spell using his grace might send up signals anyway- can you please stop poking me with your back scratcher? It’s getting a bit painful.”

Dean let the Blade sink down, removing the tip from Panic’s tummy. It wasn’t all that fun when they weren’t freaking out about their imminent demise. Besides, the stunned guppy level of cluelessness on display was countering the whole ‘we want your blood’ declaration, and the seal was starting to pull again. It wouldn’t allow him to hurt helpless humans, helpless certainly being an apt descriptor for these pathetic meatsacks.

“Look, you loser, how about you tell me-”

“Oh my god! He’s found us!”

Panic, head twisted ninety degrees away from the demon armed with a knife, was staring in open terror at a nearby symbol painted on the wall of the warehouse. It was smoking, the paint starting to peel. 

“Uh…”

Dean didn’t stop Panic from squirming out of his hold and dashing off. He took several steps back himself. In the overlay to the world that demons and angels could see, something very powerful and really ticked off was barrelling towards them, power growing like a thunderstorm beyond the steel slats of the warehouse’s roll-up cargo door.

“Dean! We need to run!”

The painted symbol vanished with a smokey fffft! and the wall promptly exploded with a mighty bang!, sending the roll-up’s slats warping out of their mooring. Dean moved his head out of the way of a piece of cinder block which whizzed past him to thump into Pudding, by the sound of the pained gasp and wheeze that followed.

Smoke and dust swirled away for an extra touch of dramatic flair to reveal a familiar trenchcoated figure.

“Cas? Jeez Louise, watch what you blow up, babe, you almost…”

Red flags were waving all over the place. It was the alien stare of horror, repulsion and confusion that his lover was giving him. It was the way Cas gripped his angel blade like he was seconds away from using it. It was the violence Cas had applied to the wall in the first place. And it was the view over the angel’s shoulder. Ruins and dust as far as the eye could see, only a few broken walls standing sentry along ash-blackened streets pockmarked with craters. Wait, wasn’t that…? Yeah, that heap a few blocks away, that was Union Station in Indianapolis, or what was left of the big orange monstrosity. The burned and blasted building, clocktower knocked over, was the degenerate crown jewel of a landscape of utter destruction all around it. What… the… hell…?

Dean turned slowly on himself. 

“Hey, Panic. Did you guys… I dunno, move me through time or something? This some Planet of the Apes shit?”

“Apes? Time?” Panic was hiding behind Pudding and they were both shaking in harmony, the barrel of the useless AR15 weaving and waving around. “Th-th-this is not your world, Dean! It’s different! And that’s an angel! He’s dangerous! Run!”

“...So just to be crystal clear, this here ain’t my Castiel, it’s the original heaven-sent-”

_“You wretched fools.”_ Original-factory-setting Castiel’s voice made the plastic windows of the warehouse rattle and shake, the plumes of dust from the destruction at his feet whipped around like a prude dame’s skirt reacting to a naugthy suggestion. “This is your plan? To summon _this?_ This abomination? Michael is right, death is too good for you and all your species. You-” 

“Just needed to be sure,” said Dean, and because offence was always the best defence, the word ‘sure’ coincided with the solid thud of his knuckles connecting with Castiel’s chin.

The angel staggered back like a drunk on a three day bender. Dean didn’t pause, followed through immediately and caught him by the trench coat. The First Blade was in his hand- but he twisted his fist so that the knuckles connected again rather than the weapon. 

Then he was grasping air. Cas had blipped away! But Dean had means now, he was after the angel in one long leap to where the critter had flown to with a twitch of his mind.

Castiel’s vessel was injured, Castiel himself, a beam of light and priggishness the size of a building, was only royally pissed and ready to kill some demon. Dean dodged an angel blade looking for his jugular, and threw an uppercut. It thudded against Cas’s forearm. Dean twisted his head away from the retaliatory punch - yep, this was definitely old-time Castiel. Dean’s Cas, now, he’d fought everything in the alphabet from angels and arachne to zombies and a possessed zookeeper, he’d battled through Hell, Heaven and Purgatory, he’d learned a thing or thirty. This Cas? Same moves as every other halo Dean had ever fought. ‘Soldiers of god’, pff. Tough, sure, but terribly predictable with their moves practiced in drone-like synchronization for billions of years.

Dean managed not to get gutted in the next second, caught a couple of wicked jabs against his forearms while he stepped back, finding space to maneuver, then he stabbed with the First Blade, aiming to miss. He knew Castiel was gonna fade out of the way, catch his arm, wrench Dean forward to disarm him with a twist of the wrist- instead of fighting the pull, Dean leaned right into it and headbutted the angel hard. 

Cas’s eyes went glassy and he staggered back again, this time on legs made of rubber. Dean stepped forward, swept the feet out from under the angel. Cas fell on the ground without a sound, rolled blindly, leapt up-

\- met Dean’s descending fist with his face, all of the metaphysical weight of a knight of hell behind the blow, accelerated by the evil will of the First Blade’s hilt gripped in Dean’s hand.

Even an angel didn’t stand a chance of coming out of that unscathed. Cas went down like a bag of flour hitting the floor, the vessel out like a light, the higher being equally stunned.

Dean hovered, legs on either side of the limp figure, left hand knotted in the trench’s lapels to give him grip, right fist raised in case another dose of anesthetic was needed. No movement. Dean breathed out raggedly. Angels hit like a steam train, it’d taken effort to eat those blows and stay functional.

“Panic! Pudding! Pull yourselves together! Got angel cuffs?!”

Pudding was still quivering like jello caught in a quake. Panic had tottered forward during the fight to pick up his angel blade from where he’d dropped it near the wall and was juggling it helplessly as he tried to get the stabby end pointing the right way.

_“Angel cuffs!”_

“What?”

Dean growled like a hellhound with a sinner’s bone. “Look in your witch bag, your pockets! Find me manacles, holy oil, consecrated wax and a sock!”

“Uh- uh-” Panic dropped the blade - it almost went straight through his sneaker - and dove towards the spell kit, while Pudding, after two shaky tries, unhooked a pair of standard-issue police handcuffs from the back of his belt. Dean, noting that with interest, imagined they’d been meant to pinion him if he’d been reluctant to contribute to the blood bank. It would have worked great on the Dean Winchester they were expecting, not so well on the one they got, who could rip out of those without even trying and embed the cuffs into interesting areas of his abductors’ anatomies. But that could be addressed later, right now Dean had an angry angel to collar before the latter woke up with a headache and a hankering to skewer demons.

Fortunately he’d picked up a lot of odd bits of knowledge over the years. The First Blade did look like a back scratcher now that he thought of it, but it was sharper than anything blunt had a right to be, effortlessly etching Enochian runes into stainless steel. The holy oil anointed the cuffs so they would work on their intended target and the wax sealed in the spell keeping said target bound and incommunicado. Spit and spackle effort compared to some of the supernatural bondage gear lying around the Men of Letters dungeon, but it’d do. 

“Th-th-that’s really gonna hold him?” Pudding stuttered, staring at Dean’s make-do angel manacles fastening Castiel’s wrists behind his back. Just in time. The angel twitched, gasped, gave his head a hard shake and then lifted burning eyes to the demon and two humans looking down at him. 

“What’s the sock for?” Panic asked as he pulled his sneaker back on (he’d been the one to donate the latter item.)

“You...you heathens! You DARE- hmf!!”

“Oh, I see.”

Castiel number two gave Dean a fulminating glare over the makeshift gag. Dean returned the smarmiest smile he could find in his repertoire. The angel’s eyes went hard, flinty and I-will-smite-thee, but his hands jerked helplessly against the restraints and there was little he could do.

A wild whoop startled both angel and demon.

“I can’t believe it!” Panic was hugging Pudding, looking giddy. “Did you see that?! We captured Castiel! An angel! Just like that! I knew Dean was amazing! Just goes to show what we humans can do!”

...Dean and Castiel looked at each other, then at Panic and Pudding swapping bromancy back thumps. Then the angel and the demon looked at each other again. Castiel closed his eyes and let his head thunk back against the broken wall Dean had propped him up against.

Dean made sure of the cuffs one last time and turned towards the idiots. 

“You two, explain.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure you’ve got questions. See, this here is not your world, it’s an alternative-”

“Not that. Explain how you’re going to send me back to the reality where my heavenly hookup isn’t a holy dick trying to kill me.”

But Dean was not allowed to look for a shortcut, he got the full explanations anyway and even had to provide some of his own on the whole ‘hookup’ concept, which was made a tad less boring when the hogtied soldier of the Lord at his feet looked like he was having an aneurysm every time Dean said the words “the angel I’m screwing.”

Explanations weren’t as bad as he feared, they were worse. Turned out, Panic and Pudding knew _all_ about Dean and his adventures from a series of fantasy-turned-reality novels, no need to name the author. Dean’s eyes flickered shut as he counted down from ten before he lost it and flew off to find a certain Chuck Shurley to gut with extreme prejudice.

And that wasn’t even the worst news.

“So if I understand you right, this is a reality where Sam and I - your versions of us - both said Yes to our respective archangels, who then wrecked the joint during their hoedown. Michael is currently strutting around in my meat, and he did this.” Dean looked around the broken streets of Indianapolis. The place had been a bit of a pit, but didn’t deserve this. It had even had some decent bars which were now surely cratered. Fuck.

“That’s right.” Panic nodded ebulliently as he capped off his summary of the end of the world. The guy possessed a peppy personality the likes of which were rarely seen.

“...Huh. I remember visiting an apocalypse-verse where I hadn’t said yes, and I gotta say, they’re much on par. Though at least Cas was still on my side in that one. I guess in this version I said yes long before he could fall, and that derailed any backbone he could have developed.”

“What?”

“Never mind, we’ve been talking too long already as far as I’m concerned, and I’m sure birdie here agrees.” The bound and gagged angel at his feet growled a counterpoint while trying to discreetly wiggle out of the cuffs. “So, you guys - I’m talking humanity in general - are up shit creek with a lollipop paddle, fine. Why am I here?”

“You have to understand, Dean, this, our world, what happened, it’s horrible-”

“Skip it.”

“After a lot of fighting and catastrophes, Michael won and Lucifer died-”

“Yay.”

“-so we thought things would get better, but then the angels, I don’t know, they decided almost every human out there is a sinner-”

“Still not caring, get to the part where you summoned me here.”

“Yes, we, the human resistance, we’ve been fighting for years, we’ve had to learn all kinds of tricks, spells, and- and-... I’m sorry.” Panic bit his lips. “We, we had to make allies, we, uh, we had to work with some demons.” 

“Ooooh, shame on you,” said Dean sententiously. 

Castiel exploded into muffled “MM-mm-m-mmhmm!” Dean kicked him swiftly in the leg and the angel shut up, but the interjection distracted the two bobbleheads, Pudding freaked while Panic returned to his rhapsody on how humans could beat angels, yessiree. Dean physically dragged them back to the center of the warehouse and their magical circle, leaving Castiel in the ruins of the wall he’d broken, sitting uncomfortably among a pile of cinder blocks and bent metal. 

“So, some demon showed you how to pull me here.”

“It wasn’t just ‘some’ demon who helped us summon you, Crowley is the king of crossroads.”

Note to self, kill Crowley in this and every other dimension. “Why?”

“It’s because he’s the boss of all the crossroad demons, so-”

“Why did he ask you to summon me, you brainless waste of skin?!”

“I know you’re annoyed, man, and that’s okay, I’m sure you don’t mean it to sound like that,” Panic said pacifyingly. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean spotted the far-off figure of Castiel look at him intently to see if the fuming demon would finally knife the two lil’ human gnats that were visibly pestering him. Off-brand Castiel didn’t know about the leash of course. Now, the seal’s Don’t Kill Humans order normally made distinctions moot between people Dean might want to murder on the one hand, and those he’d consider riff raff and would have spared anyway out of boredom, he rarely bothered fretting about it these days, he had better supernatural targets to take his bloodlust out on, but these two demon-napping sad sacks who’d dragged him away from his lover and into this fucked-up reality? They’d well merited their spot on the list of people Dean actually cared about killing, pathetic humans or not. If the seal wasn’t in place, Dean would be wearing these two as his belt and his bootlaces already. Or, seeing Pudding’s size, maybe a jacket, yeah, one of those short leather ones with fringes at the elbow made of his testicles cut into strips…

“That’s right, relax,” Panic said, misinterpreting Dean’s dreamy half smile. “You see, Michael is still in your vessel - not you, you, our version-”

“I. Got. The. Concept.”

“Of course, you’re smart.” Panic nodded like one of those drinky-bird storks on fast-forward, impression reinforced by his impressive beak of a nose. “Anyway, Crowley has invented a magical working that uses the vessel’s blood - your blood as it were, human blood unadulterated by grace. The spell will weaken Michael for our last-ditch attempt to-”

“We’re back in I-don’t-give-a-shit territory. Get to the part where you send me home, and if you do it in under ten minutes, I’ll even spare you a few drops of my blood instead of settling for a gallon of yours.”

Panic’s face dropped along with Dean’s stomach. 

“Ah, I’m so sorry, we have a problem there.”

“You better not have,” said Dean very softly. The fitful sunlight overhead seemed to dim as if storm clouds were rising fast, dust whipped around the warehouse, but the two humans failed to notice as they were busy looking down at their feet.

“...It’s not a simple matter of sending you out the way you came. Bringing something into a dimension is hard enough, but breaking out of one is even harder. Too hard to manage even with the power of angel grace normally. The only reason we could break you out of your reality is because its barriers are weakened.”

“Weakened?”

“Yeah, it’s odd. It’s like the balance of the spheres shifted in your home plane.”

“What could make that happen?”

“Well, a few things, but all extremely unlikely.” Panic scratched his dirty mane, a dubious look on his face. “Like, if Purgatory’s gates were flung open, or some very strong demons walked the earth, or there’s hardly any angels left, something like that.”

“Or all of the above, yeah, it’s been a busy decade.”

“But our reality isn't like that. Pulling you in was one thing, sending you out... well, I dunno, maybe it could work, but it’s more likely to make you go splat instead.”

“I’ll take that chance.” Dean knew he was pretty much the one unkillable thing in the universe as long as he had the Mark. “As for, I dunno, needing a zipline of grace to tow me back and forth, Cas - my Cas - is back in my home dimension, won’t that help?”

“No. His grace allowed us to connect this part of our reality to where you were in yours, and that’s done now, the rift is there, linking here and there together. The portal is one-way only, but the spell can be reversed in theory. It’d open towards your world in that case, but the strength of our reality’s barriers-”

“Splat, yeah, you said, let me worry about that, just punt me already.”

“Um, I don’t know how. I’ve only been studying sorcery for a year. I didn’t even know this kind of magic was possible, Crowley is the one who actually created this arcana and showed me how to draw it. I know the barebone mechanics, but not enough to completely change the direction of- we would definitely need Crowley for that.” 

“Where is the smarmy british bastard then?” asked Dean through gritted teeth.

“Oh, he’s not here. Demonic energy can interfere with the spell, so it was best he stayed away.”

“No, he told me it's too easy for angels to find demons even behind wards, and his presence would make us targets,” Pudding put in. 

“Oh? I’m real sure he mentioned static with the spell.”

“No, no, it was to protect us.”

“Really? Hmm, now that I think of it, he was muttering about playing it safe last time I saw him, so maybe you’re right,” Panic said blithely. “So yeah, just for our safety, he decided not to participate in casting the spell he created, he let us do it alone instead. He’s on the far side of the country now, waiting for us to finish.”

“Of course he is,” Dean gritted out while in the background he heard the distinct _thud_ of an angel’s head connecting with the wall again; it had to burn to be prisoners of a demon and these two barely sapient goons. “Well, you’ve just been promoted to Crowley Substitute, the one who is going to figure out how to reverse the spell and get me back home pronto.”

“I’d have to do some research… It’d be best if Crowley helped us, but we won’t have the time until after our attack on Michael. And I’m sure you want to help us bring him down, right? You’re, like, the hunter of all hunters!”

“Oh, am I now?” Dean’s voice went to a toying, light-hearted register that his nearest and dearest would recognize as particularly deadly. “Maybe it’s time you knew just who you’re dealing with, boy, and why you’re gonna reverse that spell even if you have to make the corrections with your blood.”

Panic and Pudding screamed and clutched each other.

Dean stood there, a bit confused. He hadn’t actually flashed the black eyes yet.

He registered that the pair of numbskulls were staring at something over his left shoulder just as a hand clapped him there and a gravelly voice said: “Dean.”

Dean spun around, First Blade stabbing.

The leash slammed into place, paralyzing him mid-movement, which was lucky since Dean would have taken an extra and possibly lethal second to interpret the meaning of the startled but otherwise not murdery expression on Castiel’s face, and the way the angel, standing dead center of the summoning circle, had tapped him on the shoulder rather than stabbed him through the lung. 

“Cas?”

“Agh! It’s Castiel! He freed himself!”

“Panic, Pudding, shut it. He’s not freed himself, he’s right over there,” Dean growled, jabbing the Blade in the direction of Castiel 2.0, boggling where they’d left him. “This isn’t exterminating angel Cas, it’s my, um, it’s the old ball and chain.”

Cas gave Dean a frowny look. “I fly better than you do, you’re always asking me to carry you when we travel, how am I an impediment to your mobility? It should be-... oh, an expression.”

Dean rubbed his upper lip with his thumb to hide a smile. “Yep, you’re definitely my angel.” 

“Yes,” said Cas with absolute certainty, which then transcended into puzzlement. “Why do you say-... I see. You’ve run into my alternate version.” He’d finally looked sideways to the other side of the warehouse and spotted his doppelganger.

“Never mind him, what are you doing here?”

“You disappeared. I fetched Sam and Rowena and flew them to the dancing house. Using her divination, Rowena found a rift between realities. She reopened it, and Sam cast a spell powered by my grace to locate and recover you, but he said the magic found…he said ‘multiple bogeys’. I don’t know what that means exactly.”

“Shit, yeah, there’s two of me here. Lucky he didn’t try to pull one of us through anyway, the odds are fifty fifty you'd have gotten way more trouble than you could handle.”

“He wasn’t going to just grab one of you at random-”

“And good thing too.”

“-he tried to get you both,” said Castiel with the quiet acceptance for reckless risk that he’d developed after witnessing all of the Winchester family’s Hail Marys over the years. “He said he’d sort out who was who on arrival. But the spell failed to work on either of you. It’s being blocked on this end.”

Crap, seemed like Panic wasn’t lying.

“Sam might have better luck if there’s only one of you to extract,” continued Cas steadily, “so we either need to remove the false signal-” Dean’s eyes flickered shut and he pinched the bridge of his nose, yeah, that wasn’t a tall order or anything, “or we need to remove the impediment to the spell. If we cannot do that, we’ll need another solution altogether. Sam and Rowena were going to look into that, but I insisted on doing something rather than sit on a sticky couch reading old books under bad lighting-” 

“Oh right, you were still at the titty joint.”

“-so I suggested going through the rift to help you. Sam wanted to do it, of course, but one of us had to stay to help Rowena.” 

“By which you mean, keep a close eye on Rowena. Good thinking, though I’m surprised you convinced Sammy to let you go in his stead.”

“I didn’t. He insisted he should go. I suggested we play rock-paper-scissors for it. He chose rock while I chose to jump through the open rift,” said Cas with a shrug. 

“I have taught you well, my young apprentice.”

“What?”

“So it’s definitive, this is dimension Hotel California; you can check in all you like but you can never leave. Damn. When you showed up, I was hoping you had a return ticket, or at least a pair of sparkly red heels.” 

Cas glanced down at his plain brown shoes, a question in his eyes.

“But I’m glad you railroaded Sam and came yourself, there’s angel trouble on this side of reality, Sam would be a bit out of his league.”

“Yes. Sam said this could be an alternate universe where the full heavenly contingent still exists, as well as alternative versions of ourselves.” Cas went back to staring long and hard at his counterpart. 

“On the money. This is definitely the old you, you wouldn’t believe the size of the stick up his ass.” 

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Cas asked, cool as a cucumber.

“Kill him?” Dean felt his jaw sag. “Just like that?”

“Yes,” said Cas, still giving veggies a run for their money in the crisp-’n-chill department. “I can see the quality of this entity’s grace. His deeds echo through the spheres, the orders he’s followed, the people he’s killed. He’s not worth much, I’m afraid.” Thirty feet away, hogtied Castiel’s eyes bulged. “And he wants to kill you very badly. He could hurt you and a lot of humans. You should have ended him.”

“Yeah, but I can’t kill you, remember? The leash?”

Cas blinked. “The seal of Ephesian? But this isn’t me, not really, it shouldn’t have triggered.”

Dean murdered the terse two-second silence that followed with an abrupt and surly, “Well it did.”

“But if you were able to attack and subdue him, then you knew it wasn’t me, so it shouldn’t have-”

“It _did.”_

“Did you actually feel it stop you?” 

“Yes! I was about to stick my blade into the asshole when- when I found I couldn't- I mean, the seal stopped me.”

Cas looked at him, really looked with those two beautiful blue peepers in that wholesome serious face that Dean would follow anywhere, with or without a leash, not that he felt like admitting it, or admitting that he hadn’t actually tried to plug the bastard who wore the same features and who might conceivably be said to be the guy that Dean lo- that Dean had kinda gotten used to having around.

“I see,” said Cas gently.

“Yeah.”

“Of course it triggered.” 

“That’s what I said.”

“I’m sorry that happened.” Cas was giving him the usual look, the one that put Dean firmly at the center of his universe. “That must have made the fight dangerous for you.”

“Oh, you know me, I kick ass. I managed.”

“Still, it was an inexcusable oversight on my part to not make the language of the seal more exact.”

“Well, what can you do, it’s not like you expected an alternate version of yourself to show up.”

“You are right.” 

“But you know, let’s not fiddle with the leash’s directives right now, it might prove dangerous. It’s a demon spell, anything can go wrong when you monkey with those. You tell me: Dean, you can kill anyone while we’re in this dimension, and who knows, either I suddenly lose my shit and go on a rampage, or else I lock up and can’t hurt a fly, so, yeah, just keep it like it is. We’ll sort it out on the flipside if we need to.” 

...Over the months of being damned for good, Dean had come to accept some things. He might have hated the seal to begin with, and if anybody other than Cas had had his hand on the choke chain, Dean would have gone into atomic meltdown until the leash snapped or the world ended, whichever came first. But it was Cas who had the end of the chain that tethered them together, and the shackle of the leash had become the key to Dean’s freedom, it let him be himself, feel murderous and demony when he wanted to, feel mellow and practically human other times, it was all good because he was above and all else still Dean through it all, he could be himself to the hilt and the leash was really only there to stop him from killing someone he might actually regret killing at a later date once a particularly bad mood subsided. Dean used the leash, he used the safeguard it provided, it belonged to him just like the angel it tethered him to belonged to him, side by side for the rest of eternity.

“That makes sense.” Cas paused and Dean caught a flicker of a look his way. “I suppose in the same vein, it would be imprudent of me to deal with him.” 

“Dude, you’d be up to killing yourself? You got issues or something? Don’t answer that.”

“It might cause stress on the seal if you see a version of me die, so I guess we will have to spare him.”

“Aw shucks,” said Dean for the form, because however fully he accepted the leash, its laws and the lover it tied him to, he didn’t want anyone thinkin’ he might be goin’ soft. That was also part of who Dean was. “But how we gonna keep him from getting up in our grill? Those slapdash angel cuffs won’t last forever.” 

“I’ll deal with it,” said Cas primly. He walked over to kneel in front of Castiel 2.0 and whispered something to him with a bare movement of his head over his shoulder. Dean thought he caught the word ‘grateful’. Angels-r-Us Castiel glanced at Dean and looked even more ready for murder than before, he didn’t see Cas reach out until the seraph touched him on the forehead.

Alternative-version Castiel went utterly white in the face and as rigid as a board, head clonking into wreckage. Cas stood up without any sign of surprise and walked back to Dean who was itching with curiosity.

“I think I’ve had that hangover before, back when I still had a pulse. It usually ends up with my head in the toilet.”

“Angels cannot physically be ill.”

“He looks like he wants to try to be the first. What the hell did you do to him?”

“I shared our memories,” said Cas heavily, looking morose and tired and very sure of himself. “It is right that I take on the burden of every human that this version of me has killed, so that they will be remembered and mourned. As for him…”

“He looks worse than when you were hiking through purgatory.”

“One of the many memories he’s inherited. Sorting through and absorbing all of them should keep him busy for awhile.”

Dean tried hard not to look impressed, much less enamored. He had a reputation to maintain after all. “Hah, knew you had a vicious streak. Okay, seeing you torture your twin in bondage is all kinds of hot, granted, but we have other fish to fry. And by fry, I mean punish with extreme prejudice.”

“Indeed. Now, those two…” Castiel turned towards the two humans who had taken refuge behind half a dozen old boxes some fifteen feet away and were trying to look very, very small. “I take it from what I heard coming in that they are the ones who kidnapped you?”

“Yeah, Panic and Pudding, two fools in way over their heads, but don’t smite them, they were just following orders.”

“The worst excuse in history.”

“They were following orders from Crowley,” Dean repeated pointedly.

Cas was silent for a stretch, then he and Dean turned towards the two monkeys.

“So, boys,” Dean called out, “how about you take us to your leader.”

\---

Panic and Pudding had actual names, but Dean didn’t bother to learn them. The bookies were still holding out even odds that he’d have to kill these two morons, being spellcasters working for Crowley and all. 

It took some persuasion for them to cooperate.

“You don’t understand, man, I’d love to help, but Crowley was very specific. He said to only summon him once we had a few drops of your blood and no angel after us.” Panic’s gaze flickered apologetically towards a patient Castiel.

“So? Instead of a few drops, you got one and a half gallons,” said Dean, waving at himself, “along with all the other useful bits. And you don’t have an angel after you, you got him on your side, along with a spare one trussed up and at your mercy. Don’t you think Crowley would consider that a triple win?”

Panic looked surprised. “Seen like that, yeah, yeah, he would.” 

“Man, I don’t know,” Pudding bleated.

“Think, dude. Time is of the essence, Crowley has to do that spell soon.” Panic was contemplating hard, the whirring of the unused engine beneath his dirty long hair was going to set the latter on fire. “Our forces are in position, remember? They expect him to hobble the big kahuna today, any minute now.”

Wow, that sounded thoroughly suicidal, and Dean was glad he was going to be in another dimension by the time that happened.

“Your allies must be close to Michael’s headquarters in order to take advantage of the element of surprise,” Castiel deduced, looking from one human to the other, “and the longer you wait, the more likely it is that your forces will be discovered and wiped out.”

“Yeah, what the angel said.” Panic did the drinky-bird nod again. 

Pudding fidgeted with a bowl and a piece of chalk, but the way Dean and Cas both stared at him caused his resolution to crumble like a cookie. “Well… okay…”

“Great! You’ll see, I’m sure Crowley will be happy,” said Panic, once again showing a boundless optimism that bordered on clinical insanity. “Come on, let’s get this ritual started.”

They picked a new spot on the concrete floor of the warehouse, one that wasn’t too dusty or covered in chunks of angelized debris, and set up a pretty standard summoning pentagram. Panic clasped his hands together and trotted out some Latin. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a faint shiver appeared in mid-air at the center.

“About time you two yobs contacted me,” a familiar voice groused. “Is it done?” 

“Yessir, mister Crowley,” Panic caroled. “We did the spell and brought Dean Winchester through, he’s here right now!”

“Did you wait thirty minutes before you contacted me? Are you certain there’s no angel activity?” the voice asked tersely.

“Oh yes, like you said, but in fact Castiel did find us, sir-” the flicker in mid-air seemed to jump and almost vanished. “But damn, you should have seen it! Dean _leapt_ at him! And he took that angel down! Like it was nothing! And tied him up! And then-”

And then Cas stepped quietly between Panic and Pudding, put his hands on their heads and caught them as they crumpled on the spot, fast asleep.

“...And? And what?”

Cas stored the two snoozing humans back behind their rampart of boxes, out of harm’s way.

“And? Bloody connection, did those two idiots break- Wait, I’m coming through. What did you say? Blimey!”

Crowley had appeared with a glass of something in one hand and a bottle of same in the other, and was now boggling in horror at the unexpected welcome wagon. He made a sound like a balloon with a slow puncture which ended in a breathless, “What- what- what did those buttmonkeys do?!”

Dean smiled like a crocodile. “C’mon, Crowley, are you really surprised those yahoos messed up a lil’? I wouldn’t trust those two to get my pizza.”

Crowley swallowed and took a discreet half step back. 

“A little?” Cas echoed thoughtfully. “He sent them to fetch a human Dean Winchester and they brought back a seraph and a knight of hell, both angry at him.”

“Right, I guess that’s not ‘a little’, that’s pineapple-and-anchovies levels of fucked.”

“Yes.”

Crowley stumbled back another half step and then his face was a picture, much like the wide-eyed hollering fella in a painting Cas had dragged Dean to see in Europe somewhere when it’d been the angel’s turn to pick R&R destinations. The demony bugger had just realized he couldn’t step back through the summoning circle in reverse. Cas had flexed a wing and disrupted the ether as soon as their target had shown up. 

A lengthy silence ensued. The pair of them looked at Crowley. Crowley looked back like a guy who was going to have to play one hell of a hand of poker even though all his cards were coming from a Go Fish! pack. 

“So, Dean… you’re not quite, ah, what I expected.”

“I’m a knight of hell, not the human you were actually aiming for, and I’m not happy with you for dragging me here,” Dean summarized for him. 

“Um… right… and… Castiel? I thought the two idiots said that you, uh,” Crowley’s eyes traveled over Cas gingerly, by tiny increments, like he was afraid the weight of a gaze might trigger retaliations, “that Dean had, ah, persuaded you to, shall we say, stand down?”

“Oh, I did,” Dean put in. “Your version, that is. We left him trussed up over there. This here is the Cas from my world. He’s not happy with you either.” 

“Right.” After a careful maneuver that got the lip of the bottle to the rim of the glass despite some nervous twitching, Crowley refilled it to the very brim, knocked it all back in five long swallows and then forced a smile.

“So gentlemen… perhaps we can talk about this…?”

\---

“You sure you can send us back?” Dean asked suspiciously. “Even though my Cas is here now?”

“Of course, of course. The rift we needed to create with his grace is built. It’s one-way at present, but it can be reversed. Um, but only once we do the weakening spell.” Crowley tossed back another glass of booze. “You see, Michael’s presence is de facto strengthening the spheres.” Dean saw Cas nod ever so faintly, this apparently made sense. “But using blood magic - your blood, his vessel’s blood - we can pry the tosser loose from his control, even if just for a few minutes, and then we can slingshot you back using a modification of the same spell that brought you here, the one set up by my envoys.”

“By envoys, you mean the gullible mooks you sent far away in case the spell blew up in their faces or brought the wrath of heaven down on their sorry asses.”

“Right, those two. Since you’re here, they must have done a good job of creating the arcana. It’s all ready to go with a few tweaks so it can fax you out instead of reeling you in.”

“Huh-uh.” Dean’s more suspicious instincts were riled, but that was their default setting around Crowley, whatever the reality. It wasn’t like they had a lot of choice if the bastard was the only one who could figure out quickly how to get them out of here. “Fine. Do the changes to the portal first, then we’ll see about your blood magic bullshit. The circle’s over there, get scribbling.”

Crowley straightened up a tad, that second-hand-car-salesman look settling on his face. “Ahh, you see, Dean, I can’t just-”

Dean exploded through space, sending dust and debris flying like meteors. He grabbed Crowley by the lapels of his fancy black suit, hoisted him up and looked him right in the eyeball, while in the supernatural dimensions the sinful black excrescences of his wings unfurled to their full width behind him, the demon equivalent of demonstrating who had the biggest dick. 

“I’ll look for a piece of chalk,” Crowley whispered in the still air. 

A piece appeared in the four inches of space between the two demons. Crowley’s eyes fastened on the small white stick and then crawled up the arm of the angel who must have taken the chalk from a snoozing Pudding. 

“Lovely. Thank you,” Crowley croaked.

After straightening out his clothes, Crowley spent some time thinking and drawing, hemming and hawing, and examining Dean out of the corner of his eyes when he thought the latter wasn’t looking. 

“Saturn is in retrograde,” Crowley muttered, “Hmm.” He rooted around Panic’s witch kit. “I’ll need to draw a new anchor-line… anoint the candles... this will help… so, Dean…I take it you didn’t make it out of hell in your reality. Went full demon. And then some, that is an impressive upgrade you’re sporting...”

“No shit.”

“...We don’t even have any knights of hell anymore, not for hundreds of years. The archangels killed them all,” said Crowley, visibly fishing for information as well as a bottle of belladonna in the witch kit. 

“Nah, that’s what they said around my neck of the woods too, but it wasn’t the archangels, it was Cain.”

Dean could have just told him to shut up, but he was fishing in turn. As far as anyone could determine, there was a rule that said only a bearer of the Mark could kill another. Dean had done for Cain back home, but if the father of murder was strutting around this neck of the woods… that would be a complication. It’d be nice to know if he was in play.

Crowley dropped his chalk in agitation. “Cain?! Blimey, I don’t think he’s around anymore.”

“You sure? Back in my home dimension, he was living in Missouri.”

“Missouri?...Missouri?” Crowley rubbed his jaw, unknowingly spreading white powder in his five-o-clock shadow. “Hmm, well, there was a strange incident near Springfield at the start of the war. Two angel flights were decimated out of the blue. The only information my spies ever found was a garbled report about some bloke being unhappy an angel knocked over his beehive.”

“That’d be him.”

“Michael went there personally, there was a whole lot of noise from that quarter, and then the entirety of Missouri vanished overnight along with a few bits of Arkansas that nobody cared about.”

“Vanished? You mean destroyed?”

“No, vanished. There’s a huge crater there now - like one you’d find on the moon, as if the place was scooped out with a giant shovel. A magic user who looked into it on my behalf said the whole thing has been locked away into another realm of existence, a mini pocket of reality disconnected from everything else. But he was rather tippled at the time, he might have mucked up his divination.” 

Dean and Cas shared a disquieted look. That… sounded ominous. Not something Dean wanted to happen to them at any rate. Another good reason to avoid Michael and get home ASAP.

Crowley was assiduously grinding crap in a mortar when Dean looked back at him, but he’d felt slimy for a second there, he’d bet his left nut that Crowley had been watching them… Dean exchanged another look with Cas. 

“So my blood combined with your spell will weaken Mike for a few minutes, and during that time you can get us out. That’s the plan?”

“That’s the plan.” Crowley was focusing a whole lot on his decoction. “Heaven lost a lot of angels during the war, but Michael’s power is holding the spheres together. Now, if the bloody bastard flinches…”

“What about the other archangels?” Cas asked abruptly.

“No longer in the picture. Lucifer killed Gabriel at the start of the war and Mikey-boy executed Rafael at the end of it.”

Cas’s eyes flew wide. “What? Rafael was his most loyal general.”

“Sure, but he was also the only person left who could kill the boss, and first in line to take over if he did, so…” Crowley's shrug made the outcome sound predictable to him, though Dean imagined it had probably taken Rafael by surprise. Dean felt a pang of longing for his and Cas’s home dimension where most of their holy forces were decimated and every one of their archangels were comfortably dead or in a cage. 

“How much longer is this going to take?”

“Oh, I have a few more things to do. Then I’ll set up a small pyre for the blood magic spell.”

“Do that, but before you get even a drop of my juice, Cas is waking up Panic and Pudding so that they can double check your work on the portal, just to be sure you’re not screwing with us.”

“...who?”

“Your two minions.”

“Oh, them.”

“We’re using that portal the second you do the blood thing. Like hell I’m waiting here for Mike to nuke us.”

“Right, right, very wise.” 

Panic and Pudding didn’t bitch half as much as Dean would have about their enforced nap. Panic had apparently forgiven Cas for his ‘understandable suspicions, man, I mean, we are the kidnappers here, it’s no wonder we made you tense’, while Pudding was too terrified to say anything as Cas marched them back to the newly modified spell circle.

“Hey, did you think to check on your alter-ego? He’s still here, right?” Dean remembered to ask as the two humans studied Crowley’s work. “We’re in deep shit if he wiggled out of his cuffs and vamoosed.”

“Can’t you tell?” 

“No, can’t see him from this angle.” Dean didn’t bother craning his neck much, he was still watching Crowley. 

Cas gave him an arch look. “You don’t have to look, you can sense him with your mind. I’ve told you before, you need to work on your abilities.”

“Yeah,” Dean said down low, leaning closer to the angel, “but I always say, if you want me to do my homework, you have to dress up in a nun’s habit and treat me like a naughty catholic schoolboy.”

“The last time we tried that, you didn’t learn anything,” Cas pointed out stolidly, “or at least nothing we didn’t already know.”

“Ahh, why do I have to learn that ESP shit when I have an angel at my beck and call?”

“You didn’t have me at your beck and call earlier today.” 

...Dean lost the ensuing staring contest by a whisker, since yeah, Cas was technically right on that last point. He closed his eyes with bad grace, reached out with his mind, poked reality like a five year old prodding his mom’s meatloaf to figure out why he’ll hate it this time. Having Cas next to him was swamping the finer signals of a Castiel who was just thirty feet away behind a wall, but eventually Dean’s senses sharpened and fine tuned the signal.

“Yeah, I can sense him over there, he’s... ugly-crying in the fetal position?”

“I think this will turn out to be a valuable growing experience for him,” Cas said serenely.

Dean couldn’t look away from those fine blue eyes, that holy expression, that righteousness that'd been earned by going to hell and back, multiple times as it were and always for the right reasons. “You’re really hot when you exercise that viciously virtuous streak of yours, angel…”

“My temperature is always the same,” Cas countered with a perfectly even tone, which was just pure teasing since even he couldn’t miss what Dean had meant-

Dean turned around sharply. Crowley was three feet away, face an exquisite shade of Smarmy.

“What are you looking at, bitch?” Dean snapped.

“Oh, just admiring the Romeo and Juliet situation we have here,” Crowley purred.

Dean’s fists itched. They always did when Crowley was around, whether it was the original or the counterfeit version… he hoped it was just that and the lewd smile that was riling his nerves. What had the demony twerp been doing while he and Cas were momentarily distracted? Nothing stupid if he knew what was good for him. There was nowhere on this green earth he could hide where Dean would not find him if Crowley tried to screw them over… Dean felt tempted to whip out the First Blade and apply a little preemptive leverage, but he let the temptation slide. Both the Mark and the Blade were carefully concealed under his flannel shirt, and they were going to stay that way. He could cow Crowley without their help, and it’d be unwise to let the son of a bitch see more than he needed to of what Dean had become; let the king of crossroads think he was dealing with just an ordinary hellknight. 

“It looks good! Great job, boss! I wouldn’t have thought of compensating for Saturn,” Panic chirped, looking up from the portal spell chalked on concrete, brand new candles already burning. “I see you have the blood magic pyre ready too. We’re good to go!”

“Good, good, go ahead and light the flame, my boy,” said Crowley genially, indicating a small teepee of wood, bones, feathers and other odds and ends a foot away from the portal. Panic crouched down and started scratching a match with large gestures. “Once that’s going, Dean, my good friend, if you could let three drops of blood fall on that cat’s skull - that’s right, the one right at the top there. The smoke will turn white, at which point the magic will trigger, Michael will lose control of his vessel, the spheres will weaken, and I’ll get the reversed portal open before leaving with my two men here to join the argy bargy at the angels’ headquarters. Everyone ready?”

Dean stepped up, jabbed his finger with a penknife Panic handed him, squeezed out some blood onto the smoking heap of crap. The fire, catching quickly on some old parchment beneath the sticks and bones, sizzled from a few extra drops. 

A huge puff of oily black smoke ballooned out from the fire and then the whole thing exploded, sending Panic falling over backwards into the dirt.

Dean spun around- 

\- but Crowley was gone!

And then thunder rang out of a clear sky, and the air was full of angels.

Four of them grabbed Pudding and a scrabbling Panic, bookending the confused humans and shoving them to their knees, blades near their throats. One mook converged on the tied up Castiel, knelt at his side (the concussed angel didn’t seem to notice). The others fanned out around Dean and Cas, a barrier between them and the one who’d appeared beyond the exploded wall, framed against a backdrop of dust and destruction; a single solitary figure, hands clasped behind his back, the whole of creation seeming to move away from him out of fear and the downtrodden deference of the conquered.

Dean Winchester stared at Dean Winchester, thoughts and dwindling options running through his mind, but one question bubbled to the surface. “...the fuck does that bastard have me wearing? Is that…a vest?”

“Desmond Merrion three piece suit, bespoke,” said Cas distantly while his eyes twitched left, right, weighing.

“No shame. That there bastard has no shame.”

Dean stretched out a hand. From the Sioux City Bandits bag, the human’s stolen angel blade came flashing through the air and into his fingers.

Cas took one look at Dean's choice of weapons, then at Dean.

A battle plan, a gamble, a quick message in a glance: let’s give 'em hell then, and Cas, don’t die on me or I’ll tear all of reality apart until I find you again...

With one massive wingbeat, Dean hurtled at the first angel in line and skewered him quick before the holy brigade could adjust to the level of demon they were facing. The celestial jerked like a fish on a line before a holy white light ripped him apart. Dean tore out the blade, leapt at the angels converging on him - and then vaulted over their heads, heading towards the second group between him and Michael.

Though there were only two dozen of them in all, these were high caliber soldiers, used to fighting side by side with the members of their flight. Dean’s action dragged the first group after him to crash into the second bunch who’d thought they were just backup, there to stop the demon from fleeing. In the midst of the small pause, the confusion of a couple of angels bumping into each other, the moment when they were trying to figure out which group was going to take first whack at the knight of hell - _flash!_ Another angel died in a gaping scream of light, the mid-afternoon sunshine dimming by comparison. Not anyone near Dean, no, one of those furthest away from him, behind all the others and in blade’s reach of Cas.

Dean knifed one of his own targets right on the heels of that distraction. He was taking down the second line, Cas was in charge of the first, now thoroughly confused, already down three men and facing the wrong way. 

The element of surprise didn’t last long, the air turned bristly with angel blades. Dean’s opponents rallied, encircled him. In the spatial reality angels and demons shared, Dean threw his wings out wide; a couple of the holy lot flinched in horror and disgust, poor birdies, another was knocked down. Dean was on her in a flash and stabbed her as she scrambled up, but then he barely managed to avoid getting knifed in the back. He dodged- shit! He had to twist around and dodge again - and again- He caught a holy dick up by the coat and threw him into two others trying to catch him in a pincer maneuver. Following through, he cut at a seraph - missed vitals, only a gash of light and a grunt of pain for his efforts, then he had to dodge the retaliation. Fuck-

_WHOOSH!_

A huge wave of force picked Dean up and slammed him into the dirt, then piledrived onto him, and on and on and on. The roof of the warehouse blew clean off, crashing into the ruins beyond, the broken wall crumbled, boxes went flying, angels staggered.

After that, everybody stood still except for the figure advancing through the ranks

“Enough of this.”

On his second try, Dean managed to wrench himself up from his imprint in the cracked concrete, head aching. He staggered to what he hoped was his feet, though he couldn’t feel his body too well right this second. 

All the angels were standing back, letting Michael approach him.

“Finally the big cheese decides to get his hands dirty,” Dean said, giving bravado a good workout and pretending his head wasn’t ringing like a gong. “Come at me, then, you-”

Apparently Michael wasn’t into bandying words about. Quips weren’t his thing. He just wound up and hit Dean - not even physically, he was still ten feet away, but his power socked Dean like he was hitting him with something heavy; something like Jupiter. 

Dean felt bones crack, his being burned. Light flayed his corruption and shredded his wings, his skin began to smoke. He bit down on a scream wrenched from deep within his guts. Shit- agh! _Shit!_

...He was on the ground again, tasting dust. Probably drooling or sporting googly eyes, or something equally cartoony and uncool. Couldn’t bring himself to care right this minute. Probably didn’t matter in final, because in his field of vision, dimmed and pulsating with odd lights, was a pair of fine shoes. His gaze inched up the hem of the well-cut pants like it was an ant trying to climb a colossus. His eyes followed the strict pleat in the expensive material, up, slow, aching, up to the knees-

A hand reached down, fastened on his collar and pulled him up. 

Dean jerked and gamely tried to bring the angel blade to bear, though his arm felt more liquid than solid.

The weapon was contemptuously struck out of his hand and the metaphysical pressure of the archangel’s power grew more, grew sharp and painful, grew knives and burning brands until even Dean’s pride had to concede and he went limp.

“To think this could exist.”

The ant crawled up the prissy vest, past the starched white collar. The colossus had his green eyes, hard and cold as the ice caps.

“I grieve for our father,” Michael said softly. Though he hadn’t looked away, he was addressing the other angels, not Dean. “Humanity, his great hope. His finest creations. Look at what the sinners have wrought, the thing they have inflicted upon our world.” 

Dean’s bones were healing despite the terrific pressure exerted on them, his head cleared a little. He still couldn't move, but he could decide that he didn’t like the way Mike talked. That hard authoritative tone, the cultured words, the snooty accent, comin’ out of a mouth meant to cuss and munch burgers- just wrong.

“Wait.” Michael looked off to one side, still holding Dean with uncaring ease at waist height. Dean dangled helplessly, he couldn’t even feel his knees drag in the dust much less get his feet under him. 

“Do not kill them.” Michael was talking about Panic and Pudding. An angel stood at a standstill over Panic, blade raised, looking back obediently at his boss. “Those two may be involved in summoning this… aberration. They can help us find the reality that spawned it. Once we have finished in this world, we will have a new task, a new plane to cleanse.” The look he gave Dean said the latter was all the affront needed to justify genocide on the reality that’d produced him. 

Then he moved his hand to Dean’s forehead.

Aw fuck- Mike was right there, right where Dean needed him but he _couldn’t move-_

“Michael!”

Dean couldn’t yet turn his head, but his gaze shied sideways.

At some point in the struggle the angels had managed to bring Cas down, though there were quite a lot of dead mooks in the dust, feathers charred into the warehouse’s cinder blocks and concrete. Two of them were pinning his arms, another one was holding him by the chest, keeping him on his knees, a fourth had his blade at Cas’s throat. Cas didn’t seem to notice, his eyes were on Dean and Michael.

“Michael! You're a son of a bitch!”

If Dean’s face wasn’t mostly paralyzed, he’d wrinkle his nose. He’d tried, he really had tried to teach his lover how to swear properly. Dean was a crackin' good teacher, if he said so himself, he could get under anyone’s skin in seconds, he could craft on the fly a triple salto of an insult that would leave the audience agog, and this, by comparison, was nothing more than a wobbly somersault. Oh, the panel of judges would surely agree it was a better effort than ‘assbutt’, but it just lacked oomph, right? It wasn’t up to the olympic standards the situation called for. Final score of three out of ten on form, one out of ten for artistry. 

Dean watched an interrogative line furrow Michael’s brow.

“Who…?” Michael looked from Cas to Castiel, propped up by one of the other angels, covering his face with his hands and shuddering helplessly in his trench coat. “I see. The Sword is defiled, and even the angels from that world are corrupted.”

“You’re the one who’s corrupted, Michael,” Cas bit back (one of the judges gave him an extra point for that, but immediately took it away again for the lack of ‘you jackbooted shit!’ or anything truly scathing in the follow through.) “You’ve destroyed this world. We won’t let you destroy ours.”

Michael’s full attention shifted to Cas. “Is that why you came here? Did you think you could assassinate me, you and this… foul creature?”

“No. We were summoned here by these humans. We did not come voluntarily.”

“Is that what I am to believe?” Michael’s cold immaculate smile was alien to his stolen features. 

“...That's what happened,” said Cas, sounding a little confused.

“This is his doing,” Michael said slowly, looking beyond Cas at the ground. “He planned this in the advent of his death. He touched you the same way he touched every human on earth, planting sin deep in their hearts so they would resist me.” 

“...who?”

"The traitor. The rebel. Your Morningstar. He is dead. I am rooting out his pawns and allies, everyone who helped him, none will survive. He is gone, you will all follow, all of you. There will be nothing left of him anywhere when I am done.”

He said it very precisely, steady and self-assured to the hilt, but Dean - who could start to feel his fingers again - now knew that this fucking archangel was, on top of everything else, completely cuckoo. From the stony gaze Cas was giving him off to one side, he’d cottoned on to it too.

“You will die,” Michael announced, “and this creature will die, and the human race will die. There will only be Heaven and our glory left. The darkness will be torn out, here and in your world and in every world if that’s what it takes.” He straightened, hauled Dean a little closer, his hand rising up, but his attention was on his audience, or possibly on the bag of loose marbles inside his skull. “I am the pure light of creation divine, I am the first of God’s children, the chosen son, I will impose order on chaos wherever I find it, and I-”

Thunk!

The words stopped, leaving a silence like thunder in their wake; a silence that shook the sky, froze the earth, quietly wiped out stars…

In that mausoleum hush, Dean said: “Yeah, you’re all that alright, but I got a bone with teeth in it.”

Michael stared down at the First Blade impaling him through the chest. He didn't seem alarmed. Surprised, mainly. Confused. He opened his mouth-

The blade twisted half an inch clockwise and now the alien look on Michael’s face, that was shock and the beginnings of pain.

“H-How-” 

An incremental twist of the knife suggested he shut up.

Michael shut up and fixed wide eyes on the face that matched his own, bar the jagged sneer and the all-black eyes. Dean, smoke still gently wafting off of him, finished unfolding from the twisted lunge that he pulled out of every last bit of hatred and bloodymindedness he’d ever possessed, alive or dead, to rear up, rip the Blade from the back of his jeans and plunge it where it belonged.

All the angels stared, uncertain, because their lil’ pocket bibles told them that only an archangel wielding an archangel blade could kill another archangel, and a demon with an ass-bone didn’t qualify, so what the hell was going on, why was Big Mike standing there instead of chortling in a superior way, smiting Evil and getting on with his day?

Mike, though, he knew what was happening, he just couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t make the fact fit into his mad world view...

“You wondering how this is killing you, Mike?” Dean correctly interpreted the way the archangel was staring at him, confused beyond expression. Dean’s gaze fell to the Blade. The jawbone was stuck in Mike’s chest all the way to the swell corded with leather beneath the last row of teeth. “Other than your own lil’ knives, weapons can’t kill archangels, right? Not even the Colt. But this one, well, it’s the exception, especially for you. Know why?”

Michael stared in disbelief too great for anger or fear to get a toe-hold.

“Because this is the First Blade. It’s the fratricide’s knife.”

The familiar green eyes widened.

“You’re starting to grasp it now. Why this is your exit ticket. Because however high-falutin’ your cause is… somewhere in there is a Dean who said Yes and got to watch you use his hands to kill his brother Sammy. And there’s you, mighty proud you killed your brother Lucifer. But this blade knows the taste of a brother’s blood. It knows the sin of it. It’s going to kill you, Mike, because deep inside, behind your reasons and your hoity-toity righteousness and your fucking paranoid bullshit, you murdered your brother and a tiny part of you knows you have to pay for that. It’s here to collect the tab.”

“Wait-” A light had flickered. It’d flashed at the back of Michael’s eyes, it made his shadow jump and dance, it had spurted out briefly around the hilt of the First Blade. “Wait- you can’t-” 

Dean lifted an eyebrow. 

“You can’t! The world- Heaven- the universe- it needs me! It needs my strength! You- you don’t know what you’re doing! You _can’t!_ Step back. I can give you assurances I will not harm you. But you have no idea of the consequences of what you're about to do. _Think_ about this!” 

“...Fine.” Dean tilted his head to one side, scratched his cheek with his free hand.

Michael opened his mouth-

The blade hewed sideways through a lot of bloody boney gristly things.

“And I'm done thinking.” 

Dean watched with cold malice and justified anger as Michael staggered free of the weapon, light flashing up and down the body as his knees began to buckle-

_Cra-aaack!_

…Dean blinked, and then blinked again. His eyelids scraped over what felt like raw dry stones, he couldn't see a damn thing, but then his eyeballs started healing themselves. The light. The massive light that had erupted from the dying archangel had seared his eyes blind. 

“Whu?”

There was a warm body pressed against him, it’d picked him up, bundled him down to the ground and covered him from the blast of light like a hundred lightning strikes hitting the ground at the same time.

“C-Cas?”

“Yes.”

That explained that.

“You okay?” Dean asked, because even though he’d only been at the heart of the flash for an instant… he’d gotten pretty badly nuked. His demonic ability to heal was being put to the test. It’d already gotten its monthly workout trying to get him functional earlier after Michael hit him. And good thing it’d glued him back together before Magic Mike smote him for real instead of merely toying with him. That… would have been painful beyond belief. It would also (likely, probably, according to the latest polls on the subject) not have actually killed him, leading the host to investigate this phenomena of an apparently immortal knight of hell. If the Blade or the Mark had come to light while Dean was helpless, he’d be currently sharing an address in Nowhere, Missouri with a pissed-off Cain...

“I’m fine, Dean.” 

Dean bought that ‘fine’ like he bought Panic’s at the start of this transdimensional caper, and the smell of burning trench coat suggested he was right. Everyone was blasted down, even the angels, and the humans were lying on the ground, covering their eyes like the old hands they were, their thick canvas clothing smoking even though they’d been some distance away. Dean had been at ground zero. Cas didn’t need to say anything more. That ‘fine’ wasn’t a ‘I am doing great! Totally unburned!’, it was, ‘At least I’m alive, being an angel and not a demonic charcoal briquette like you.’

Eventually they straightened up in a world that felt totally different, fragile and new like skin after the scab came off. And virtually angel-free, even the Upside-Down Castiel was gone. Other than themselves, there were just two cowering humans left. And the body. 

Dean glanced over at Dean, dead in the dust, mouth open, staring blindly at the empty sky. He scratched his chin thoughtfully with the First Blade, absently getting some blood there. “Huh. You know, I think this is what those yuppies call ‘therapeutic’. At least I feel a lot less angry and bloodthirsty than I usually do.”

“Good,” said Cas with perhaps a faint hint of irony as he brushed soot off his trenchcoat. “Now let us see if we can leave.”

“Yeah, the sooner the better.”

“After this, I don’t think the host will attack us.”

“I just don’t want to get dragged into any more of this reality’s issues. Now, we need someone to cast the spell in reverse. Hey, Panic! Shake a leg! I want out of here in under one minute.”

“Oh...my...god...Oh my god! Oh my _god!_ Oh my-...GOD! He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s-”

“I think it will take longer than that,” said Cas with his usual grasp of the obvious.

Panic staggered over, detouring around Michael at a prudent distance yet unable to look away. Finally he squawked, threw his arms up in the air and did something with his hips that might have been a victory dance, or at least a victory wriggle.

“This is it! We showed them! It’s- it’s AMAZING! We showed them what a human can do!”

Dean’s jaw dropped. _“Seriously?”_

Still doing the worm-dance, Panic glanced at him interrogatively. What the- the dude had been present for Dean’s entire display! Sure, he had an angel holding him down the entire time - but still, how could he have possibly missed Dean’s preternatural kickassery-...

Dean scrutinized him, really looked the human over in depth for the first time. The feverish bloodshot eyes swimming around, the bags under ‘em like pillows, the pallor, the sweat. Dean waggled a finger at the display the human was putting on. “Resistance pretty hard, huh? Got some PTSD going there? Or is it bad food?”

Panic, still doing the floss (because there truly was no god), stared at Dean blankly. “I don’t understand, the food in the resistance is pretty good, or, well, at least we get some, along with weapons. Yeah, we get food, shelter for our families, weapons and- and a cause, man, the means to fight, and, and friends to stand with, and Molly of course.” 

“Your girlfriend?” Yuck, how asinine.

“No, it's these pills Crowley gives us before every mission, as much pep as vitamins he told me when-”

“Say no more, I figured it out.” Dean grabbed the hopped-up loon and maneuvred him towards the portal circle, ignoring Pudding who was still curled up in a ball and staring blankly at the sky as if expecting divine retribution any second. 

“The angels will be weakened, your forces have a chance now,” Cas told Panic as he walked at Dean’s side. “But do not trust Crowley anymore. He has his own designs.”

Panic rotated his head to look at the angel. “What? Crowley’s helping us.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Idiot.”

“Huh?”

“Crowley sold us out,” Cas explained patiently. “Whether your forces took out Michael or not was no longer all that relevant to him, not if there was a chance it would leave Dean alive here to usurp his reign over Hell.”

“What? But- but why-”

“Him and Michael are birds of a paranoid feather,” Dean grunted, situating Panic at the north point of the circle and placing the bowl of hoodoo juice in his hands. “I _told_ the bastard I just wanted to leave, he didn’t have to stick a knife in my back.”

“He tends to think everyone is as devious and ambitious as he is, he’d worry you’d change your mind about leaving if Michael died, leaving a power vacuum,” Cas pointed out, persevering in finding sense in Crowley being an asshole rather than simply accepting it as a law of nature and leaving this shithole right now, which would be Dean’s choice. “But it’s just as likely he simply knew the blood magic spell was going to fail, leaving you stuck here and very angry with him. Remember, in order to work, he needed unadulterated human blood.”

“Oh yeah.” Dean wasn’t quite sure what optional extra he currently had coursing through his veins, but he wouldn’t offer to give a transfusion to anyone, or at least nobody he really cared about. 

Cas turned back to Panic earnestly. “Crowley rigged the blood magic pyre to explode, a distraction while he vanished, and then he dropped a thought to Michael on what we were supposedly planning. Michael reacted immediately, appearing with whatever forces he had to hand, leaving Crowley’s two enemies to fight it out, eliminating one, possibly weakening the other. He had little to lose either way.”

Panic swayed, looking like he was suffering a mental meltdown. “But… no, man, I’m sure there’s another explanation...”

Cas opened his mouth but Dean caught him by the wrist and turned him away from the moronic human. “Panic, do the spell or I’ll eviscerate you. C'mon, Cas, forget him and let's motor. The way I see it, Lula still owes us half an hour.”

“Marjorie left her workplace before I jumped in the rift, she was telling her grandmother over the phone about disappearing men, angels, and how she’ll be attending all of the religious services she can find from now on.”

“Well damn.”

“I still have the list of dancing places you printed off before our Albuquerque trip,” Cas offered, putting his hand inside his trench coat pocket.

“...Nah, I got a better idea.”

“What?”

“It’s still sort of nebulous, but it involves you, me, a set of mojoed handcuffs and you being a badass angel of the lord set on punishing an evil demon. We’ll see where it takes us.”

Cas looked intrigued as Panic’s chanting pierced the veil of reality. A hole appeared, bending the air into odd shapes. Colored neon shone off a black pleather couch beyond it, and Sam looked up, startled, from a book, tiny in the warped air like they were looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope. The angel and the demon took a step forward and the rift expanded and leaped towards them as if to give them a hug. 

“Thanks again, Dean!” Panic shouted at their back. “You are every bit the hero Chuck Shurley said you were! You showed us what a real red-blooded human can do!”

“Oh, right, I almost forgot. Hey, bozo, look me in the eye and say that again!”

But Cas, the spoilsport, had already pulled Dean fully through the rift before he could flash his black-on-black peepers, leaving an ecstatic idiot behind, dreams of human supremacy uncrushed. The angel was going to pay for that. Oh yes. Handcuffs for sure.


End file.
